American Politics VII: Virginia Reel

[Eahland]

Getting rid of the filibuster be like:
Every body Gangsta till the republicans win the senate and pass all the laws the dems don't like.

Well, 1) The filibuster doesn't actually prevent that, because the Democrats are unwilling to use it effectively. (e.g,, the survival of Obamacare hinged on McCain's vote, not a Democratic filibuster.)

2) The Republicans have shown willingness to trim back the filibuster when they need to in order to push through parts of their agenda. (e.g. stacking the courts)

3) Disempowering the federal government and allowing Republican-controlled states free reign to implement their horrific agenda unchecked is an explicit part of the Republican strategy, so obstructionism actively serves Republican interests.

4) The filibuster is preventing the passing of laws critical to defending American democracy from Republican encroachment, so burning it down now and passing federal voting rights legislation, enfranchising D.C. and Puerto Rico, and other laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good, is critical to ensuring that the Republicans don't win the Senate.

[Ifreann]

That's a point you would only sincerely make if you were a Democrat who feared Republican control of the Senate. But I would conclude from your pro-cop flag that you are more aligned with the Republicans. So it doesn't make sense for you to warn Democrats not to do away with the filibuster, not if you really believe that it would ultimately benefit Republicans. If you really believed that abolishing the filibuster would be a win for Republicans then you'd just quietly gloat among your Republican friends about the Democrats shooting themselves in the foot, and say nothing around Democrats for fear of them realising their mistake.

Republicans would only warn against abolishing the filibuster if they believed that they would lose if Democrats started actually wielding power. No Republican with even a speck of political savvy would give real, honest advice to the Democrats on how to beat the Republicans. Not even Donald Trump would go around telling his political enemies how to make sure they win and he loses.

Your point being?

Im just saying how it would be a bad idea for all involved.

My point is that when you, a Republican, say to Democrats "Don't abolish the filibuster, or the Republicans will win!", Democrats should see that and realise "They're afraid of us abolishing the filibuster, they're telling us not to do it because if we do, we win."

[Tarsonis]

I understood you argument.

Judging by your poor attempts at characterizing my argument, I have serious doubts.

You missing his point, and thinking you've refuted it isnt hard to characterize. Chickens and chessboard come to ming.

Your mentality is the problem, not the solution. You're not half as clever as you think you are.

You are not as insightful as you think you are by making one-liner posts.

Your posts don't require me to use even 10% of my insight

[Tarsonis]

Your point being?

Im just saying how it would be a bad idea for all involved.

My point is that when you, a Republican, say to Democrats "Don't abolish the filibuster, or the Republicans will win!", Democrats should see that and realise "They're afraid of us abolishing the filibuster, they're telling us not to do it because if we do, we win."

Cause Ifrean just wants to see the world burn.

Never forget kids, this mentality is why you have a 6-3 conservative court.

[Picairn]

You missing his point, and thinking you've refuted it isnt hard to characterize. Chickens and chessboard come to ming.

Repeating something doesn't make it true.

Your posts don't require me to use even 10% of my insight

Which is laziness on your part, given that you can't even produce a proper counter-argument.

[Tarsonis]

You missing his point, and thinking you've refuted it isnt hard to characterize. Chickens and chessboard come to ming.

Repeating something doesn't make it true.

No, but repeating the truth doesn't make it false either.

Your posts don't require me to use even 10% of my insight

Which is laziness on your part, given that you can't even produce a proper counter-argument.

It's not laziness when you're countering something that's fallacious prima facie

[Kilobugya]

Well, 1) The filibuster doesn't actually prevent that, because the Democrats are unwilling to use it effectively. (e.g,, the survival of Obamacare hinged on McCain's vote, not a Democratic filibuster.)

Wasn't that "skinny repeal" bill using budget reconciliation ?

But I agree with everything else you said.

[Picairn]

No, but repeating the truth doesn't make it false either.

Except you stated no truth. Nice try.

It's not laziness when you're countering something that's fallacious prima facie

You can't even elaborate how it's fallacious. Lame attempt, try again.

[Ifreann]

My point is that when you, a Republican, say to Democrats "Don't abolish the filibuster, or the Republicans will win!", Democrats should see that and realise "They're afraid of us abolishing the filibuster, they're telling us not to do it because if we do, we win."

Cause Ifrean just wants to see the world burn.

Never forget kids, this mentality is why you have a 6-3 conservative court.

"Don't trust political advice from your political opponents" is why America's Supreme Court is conservative? Mmm, somehow I don't think that's entirely accurate.

[Tarsonis]

No, but repeating the truth doesn't make it false either.

Except you stated no truth. Nice try.

Your inability to grasp it, doesn't make it not true.

It's not laziness when you're countering something that's fallacious prima facie

You can't even elaborate how it's fallacious. Lame attempt, try again.

I did, your view is short sighted and will only further erode the Democratic institutions, it's not a sound position. Big picture isn't really your thing.

[Antipatros]

Do other nations have the equivalent of our Senate's filibuster?

If so, is it used as judiciously as it is here? If not, how does that impact their ability to govern?

[Tarsonis]

Cause Ifrean just wants to see the world burn.

Never forget kids, this mentality is why you have a 6-3 conservative court.

"Don't trust political advice from your political opponents" is why America's Supreme Court is conservative? Mmm, somehow I don't think that's entirely accurate.

McConnell 2013: "Eliminating the 2/3rds majority requirement to confirm will set a dangerous precedent where either side can ram through anybody they want to positions."

Reid: "Hah, you're just worried. Nuclear option go burr."


Schumer 2017: "You can't get rid of the 2/3rds majority requirement for SCOTUS, that'd not fair!"

McConnell: "Hah, nuclear option go burr."

[Tarsonis]

Do other nations have the equivalent of our Senate's filibuster?

If so, is it used as judiciously as it is here? If not, how does that impact their ability to govern?

to be fair, our filibuster isn't what it used to be either. They need to bring back the talking filibuster, not eliminate it altogether

[Ifreann]

"Don't trust political advice from your political opponents" is why America's Supreme Court is conservative? Mmm, somehow I don't think that's entirely accurate.

McConnell 2013: "Eliminating the 2/3rds majority requirement to confirm will set a dangerous precedent where either side can ram through anybody they want to positions."

Reid: "Hah, you're just worried. Nuclear option go burr."


Schumer 2016: "You can't get rid of the 2/3rds majority requirement for SCOTUS, that'd not fair!"

McConnell: "Hah, nuclear option go burr."

Addison Mitchell McConnell III, a politician famous for his strict adherence to and respect for precedent. That's why he refused to allow a vote on confirming Amy Comey Barrett, per the precedent he himself set at the end of the Obama presidency. Such honesty and sincerity truly restores one's faith in the system.

[Kilobugya]

Do other nations have the equivalent of our Senate's filibuster?

I'm not aware of any that does.

The EU (which is not a nation) has "qualified majority" mechanism, requiring 55% of states representing 65% of the population to pass a bill in the Council. But the Council is a meeting between head of states/governments, who are supposed to reach agreement through diplomacy, not an hyper-partisan chamber with two antagonist parties.

[Kilobugya]

Addison Mitchell McConnell III, a politician famous for his strict adherence to and respect for precedent. That's why he refused to allow a vote on confirming Amy Comey Barrett, per the precedent he himself set at the end of the Obama presidency. Such honesty and sincerity truly restores one's faith in the system.

It was already known that Mitch McConnell was without one inch of decency and integrity, and would just use all dirty tricks he can to advance his agenda without a single shred of ethical constraint, but that really nailed it if anyone had any doubt left.

[Tarsonis]

McConnell 2013: "Eliminating the 2/3rds majority requirement to confirm will set a dangerous precedent where either side can ram through anybody they want to positions."

Reid: "Hah, you're just worried. Nuclear option go burr."


Schumer 2016: "You can't get rid of the 2/3rds majority requirement for SCOTUS, that'd not fair!"

McConnell: "Hah, nuclear option go burr."

Addison Mitchell McConnell III, a politician famous for his strict adherence to and respect for precedent. That's why he refused to allow a vote on confirming Amy Comey Barrett, per the precedent he himself set at the end of the Obama presidency. Such honesty and sincerity truly restores one's faith in the system.

Ignores history of Democrats to throw stones at Republicans. I always suspected you were a partisan hack, but thanks for confirming it.

McConnel is a partisan hack, but democrats gave him the precedent to do it. You're just lying to yourself by ignoring it.

[Kowani]

Getting rid of the filibuster be like:
Every body Gangsta till the republicans win the senate and pass all the laws the dems don't like.

addressing this for a second, because this point is far too common-and remains horrible
the senate GOP caucus-who are, i think uncontroversially, much more plutocratic and wealth-friendly than the average republican voter (or even the median house republican)-cares about 3 things
those things are, in no particular order, judges, tax cuts, and the military
notice how none of those things require a 60 vote threshold-judge nominations don't have filibusters (harry reid was right, even if the mechanics are complicated and he should have done it faster), and tax cuts can be done through reconciliation (like the TCAJA)
even the military can be supplemented through reconciliation on those rare occasions that the bipartisan warmongering consensus falls apart (which i can't actually think of off the top of my head, but there's probably something)
so on the policy issues that would require 60 votes to break a filibuster, senate republicans are more than happy to let their majorities in state legislatures experiment with legislation that provides conservative courts-a judiciary they've been stacking for years-the opportunity to legislate from the bench
but because the states are so monolithically partisan, the risk of a backlash from going too far (especially when it's a court that does so) is very, very small-and with such a large percentages of judges appointed by Trump and a 6-3 SCOTUS majority, much less the obama blockade, the filibuster becomes an asymmetric weapon the senate GOP can bypass it for their main priorities and wait for the courts to handle secondary priorities (like, say, abortion or lgbt+ rights)
now this doesn't always work in their favour-the Bostock decision is a good example of this-but as McConnell's memoir tells us, it's about the Long Game
but in comparison, almost all the most important things on the Dem agenda--voting rights, immigration, climate change, structural reforms--are all policy-oriented with secondary budget impacts, and are thus subject to the 60-vote threshold
the only ones that aren't, social programs, are running headfirst into a wall shaped like joe manchin and kyrsten sinema

so what we get, in the end, is a situation where the filibuster is asymmetric in its impact in general, but especially in an era of conservative courts (which is one we're living in right now)

if it ever became effective for Republicans to eliminate it, they would in a heartbeat-they were going to for juidicial noninations back in the early 2000's and then centris dems handed them all the nominees they wanted and letthem keep it anyway
they don't abolish it-not because of principle, but because they know it's far better on balance for them for it to be in place

and if the Dems ever came to control the courts again, Republicans would likely move to eliminate the filibuster specifically to pass laws limiting the courts' authority, (which is entirely legal) just like they do in every other state where they lose control of a lever of government, they use the layers they still control to render powerless (or at least reduce as much as possible) whichever one they don't-all we have to do is look at states like Wisconsin or Kentucky to see what happens when you have a blue governor and a red legislature (or ohio, when we have a red legislature and a not-totally-insane red governor)

this is the status quo-the filibuster blocks things senate democrats want, while senate republicans can get what they want without it-they just have to wait a bit for the secondary priorities
and because a lot of the things that democrats want don't work well when done by-or legally can't be done by the states, that strategy isn't an option for them anyway

[Page]

Getting rid of the filibuster be like:
Every body Gangsta till the republicans win the senate and pass all the laws the dems don't like.

Getting rid of the filibuster be like pointless cause the Republicans already control the Senate with their homies Manchin and Sinema.

[Senkaku]

Cause Ifrean just wants to see the world burn.

blows my mind that Americans say this more abt people who want to abolish the filibuster or pack the Supreme Court than abt people who oppose radical climate policy lol

changing Senate norms is destructive nihilism, but taking our entire civilization down in a mass extinction is just good business

[Ifreann]

Addison Mitchell McConnell III, a politician famous for his strict adherence to and respect for precedent. That's why he refused to allow a vote on confirming Amy Comey Barrett, per the precedent he himself set at the end of the Obama presidency. Such honesty and sincerity truly restores one's faith in the system.

Ignores history of Democrats to throw stones at Republicans. I always suspected you were a partisan hack, but thanks for confirming it.

McConnel is a partisan hack, but democrats gave him the precedent to do it. You're just lying to yourself by ignoring it.

I'm ignoring nothing. McConnell has proven by his actions that he does not give a shit about precedent, he'll ignore it whenever it suits him. He didn't ram through appointments to the Supreme Court under a Republican president because Democrats gave him the precedent to do it. He did it because that's his political agenda. He was always going to do it, precedent or not. We know this, because when precedent did get in his way, he ignored it.

He didn't warn Democrats against the nuclear option because he was trying to help them out, he warned them against the nuclear option because he was afraid of them thwarting his agenda, that being Republican control of the courts, by appointing their own judges.

[Kowani]

"Don't trust political advice from your political opponents" is why America's Supreme Court is conservative? Mmm, somehow I don't think that's entirely accurate.

McConnell 2013: "Eliminating the 2/3rds majority requirement to confirm will set a dangerous precedent where either side can ram through anybody they want to positions."

Reid: "Hah, you're just worried. Nuclear option go burr."

this is a hilarious misreading of what happened
so let's do a little senate history, with a little more context

back in 2005. Republicans wanted to go nuclear to confirm Bush’s judges big time
Bush, Cheney and Frist at the time were all eager to go nuclear. the floor general for the fight, s a young senator named Mitch McConnell. In May of that year, on the Senate floor, McConnell announced that the “Senate is prepared to restore the Senate’s traditions and precedents,” and go nuclear. (because the 60 vote senate isn't a tradition, it's a 2010s abuse of a 1975 modification of a 1970 procedural reform of a 1949 rewrite of a 1917 rule of 1880s reforms of a 1841 abuse of an 1806 glitch)
the main issue was the nomination of a bunch of hyper-conservative Bush judicial nominees, like William Pryor and Janice Rogers Brown (these names may or may not be familiar). Dems were using the filibuster to block them.
So into this space stepped the Gang of 14, yet another "bipartisan gang coming in to save the senate". No one wanted what they were selling - not Republican leaders, not Democratic leaders. of course, they garnered a ton of media attention for themselves and were seen as the great saviours of the Senate (it didn't happen that way, of course). But all they did was waste a bunch of time-and give the republicans a political gift
our famed Gang of 14 struck a very stupid deal, whereby Dems retained their right to filibuster, but were only allowed to use it under “extraordinary circumstances.” the Dems, of course, were very conscientious in how they applied this standard, and the Republicans basically convinced them that no one met it.
Most of the controversial Bush nominees who had kicked off the controversy in the first place, all of them with fewer than 60 votes. In other words, Bush got most of the judges that he threatened to go nuclear over, without having to go nuclear-and avoid taking the hit. He lost...I think, 2, both of whom withdrew. All of of the leaders hated the deal (unless you were a republican, in which case you were giddy). Reid gave a speech saying the Dems were already using the “extraordinary circumstances” standard, to no avail. and for their part, the Bush WH wasn’t satisfied getting only the judges covered by the deal. They wanted to keep going.
so their plan was to put forward judicial nominees who would test the boundaries of the deal, force Democrats to filibuster, and give Republicans an excuse to go nuclear - like they'd wanted to do all along and ram through a bunch of nominees. One of those nominees put forward to test the Gang of 14 deal - to see if Democrats would filibuster, and in so doing, give Republicans the excuse to go nuclear they wanted - was a former aide to Ken Starr whose earlier nomination had been blocked by a filibuster…named Brett Kavanaugh.
after somehow deeming that Kavanaugh didn’t meet the “extraordinary circumstances” standard, and boxed in by Republicans’ nuclear threat, the Dems did not filibuster Kavanaugh and let him be confirmed to the DC Circuit with fewer than 60 votes.
Two other nominees did not meet the G14 “extraordinary circumstances” standard and were therefore not filibustered: John Roberts and...Samuel Alito. now Roberts probably would’ve been confirmed no matter what, but Alito was confirmed with fewer than 60 votes.
So what did Democrats get out of this Gang of 14 deal?
Literally nothing.
What did Republicans get? Pretty much all the judicial nominees they wanted.
but there's more
Republicans also got to preserve the filibuster, which Dems had fallen over themselves to enshrine. thus when Obama won, instead of being able to confirm whomever he wanted on a majority vote because the gop had gone nuclear under Bush, he had to slog for 5 years to get his nominees confirmed (some of whom literally died waiting)
Did the dems realize they’d been played, and quickly go nuclear themselves? no, of course not- It took them 5 years to do it, causing Obama to bleed enormous political capital over that time.
If they had let Republicans go nuclear, the GOP would have gotten the exact same same crop of judicial confirmations, and Obama could’ve nominated whomever he wanted to be confirmed with just a majority, in a Senate where he had 60(ish) Dems. (much less merrick garland, where it's easier to hold 14 republicans than it is 4)
and the rest is history....
after leading the fight to go nuclear in 2005, flipping 180 degrees under Obama to claim going nuclear would break the Senate, McConnell immediately went nuclear when it served his interests to confirm Gorsuch to the seat he blocked Garland from filling
and yeah, the republicans who were part of the Gang of 14 suddenly found it in their interest to filibuster obama nominees


the most important part of this story-and the one that everyone blaming reid for causing his own downfall misses-is that mcconnell's warnngs about "going nuclear would break the senate" weren't actually because he was concerned about the senate as an institution

[Tarsonis]

Ignores history of Democrats to throw stones at Republicans. I always suspected you were a partisan hack, but thanks for confirming it.

McConnel is a partisan hack, but democrats gave him the precedent to do it. You're just lying to yourself by ignoring it.

I'm ignoring nothing. McConnell has proven by his actions that he does not give a shit about precedent, he'll ignore it whenever it suits him. He didn't ram through appointments to the Supreme Court under a Republican president because Democrats gave him the precedent to do it. He did it because that's his political agenda. He was always going to do it, precedent or not. We know this, because when precedent did get in his way, he ignored it.

He didn't warn Democrats against the nuclear option because he was trying to help them out, he warned them against the nuclear option because he was afraid of them thwarting his agenda, that being Republican control of the courts, by appointing their own judges.

Yep yep yep. Democrat good, republican bad.

[Senkaku]

McConnel is a partisan hack, but democrats gave him the precedent to do it.

partisan hacks do not require precedent to give them permission to be partisan hacks, they will do it all by themselves

[Caleonia]

(Am I accidentally witnessing a filibuster being made while talking about filibusters, or am I blind? It could be both, but man this has gone on for a long time with lots of big posts.)